CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

  In any case, the Musso car had to stop twice each heat for tires and it wore out three drivers, Musso, Hawthorn, and Hill. It finished third overall, largely because only 6 of the 19 starters were still circulating at the end.

  There was one accident. In the third heat Moss grazed the barrier at the topmost edge of the banking while making about 165 miles per hour. This burst both tires, broke the wheels, and sent the car spinning into the infield where it came to rest, Moss sitting there completely shaken, unable to believe he had got away with it.

  Meanwhile, the entire crowd began to stir and whisper. It was like wind moving over the top of a wheatfield. You could see it, you could hear it, and you could feel it.

  Accident!

  So you began counting the cars flashing by.

  Moss.

  Where was Moss?

  And then you were filled with a horrible certainty that Moss was dead, it being impossible to walk away from a crash at such speeds as that.

  In the pits, Moss' wife, Katie, went white. She began babbling about anything that came into her head, trying to blot out the awful certainty. The ambulance went out for Moss. When Katie saw him, the relief was so great she nearly fainted. They embraced. He could feel her trembling as he kissed her. Later, Katie tried to put into words what she had felt: "The incredible loneliness of the position you're in when something you've always dreaded happens."

  The race did not end without a large batch of ill-feeling. The Indy drivers used all the blocking tactics that are so practical in American track racing, and so deadly in European road racing. The Europeans almost never try to block a faster car. Instead, they pull over and wave it on; that way everybody lives a little longer.

  But the Americans blocked Moss, who shook his fist at them time and again; and blocked Hill who, during one intermission, said to Rodger Ward: "I'm faster than you are, Rodger, but at the only places where it's safe to pass, you cut me off."

  "We're not sporting car drivers," sneered Ward. "We don't wave people past like gentlemen. We have to fight for our money."

  On that friendly note the race ended. The crowd was again far below expectations, and in 1959 the race was canceled. It may be that there will never be another Race of Two Worlds.

  For some reason, Monza has always been considered the place to try anything out. Even Mercedes, with a perfectly good Nurburgring at home, used to come there before the war whenever they wanted to experiment with a new wrinkle or gimmick. Moss came to Monza to test the teething BRM in the early 1950s, and he came again in 1959 to test a Cooper with a BRM engine, and a Cooper with a new Italian-made gearbox. The first rear-engined BRM was tried out there before the 1959 Italian Grand Prix. And for the 1958 Grand Prix, Moss turned up with one of the most bizarre wrinkles of all, a plastic bubble canopy that was to make the Vanwall the most aerodynamically perfect car of all time. Moss tried the canopy for a few laps, then vigorously discarded it; it only added 50 rpms, he said, and the noise inside it was incredible.

  Races at Monza rarely are tightly fought. There are too few corners, the circuit is too fast, and the Grand Prix comes in September when cars and drivers are known quantities. Few manufacturers manage to add secret horsepower just for that race; if there had been any extra horses in the car the manufacturer would have found them much earlier in the season.

  Instead, Monza is a place where races are more significant than exciting. For instance, it was at Monza that Alberto Ascari proved that the Ferrari marque was a corner, in 1950. He did not win the race, but he blew up one car trying, took over a second, and nearly blew that up too. Nino Farina's Alfa beat him by over a minute, but the handwriting was there for all to see: next year the Ferraris would win. They did.

  Again, it was at Monza in 1956 that Harry Schell showed for the first time that the Vanwall had a future. He, too, blew up the car, but not before snatching the lead from Fangio, losing it to Moss, and repassing Moss to go in front again. Vanwall had somewhere found the horses; the next season the car won three Grands Prix out of seven, one of them at Monza.

  Perhaps the 1959 Italian Grand Prix will prove the most significant of all. Perhaps it will prove to have sounded the death knell of the front-engine car. For the proud Ferraris, with their herculean strength, their 300 thundering horsepower, were neatly beaten by Moss in a Cooper, the slim Cooper nipping in front when the blood-red behemoths stopped for new tires, having squandered their old.

  That the Italian pit crew bungled the pit stops, that perhaps no tire change was necessary in the first place—that is another story. Italian pit crews, reveling in the excitement and drama of the moment, their hearts thumping as stopwatches tick and all eyes watch their fumbling fingers-Italian pit crews have been bungling pit stops for years.

  What is significant is that Italian engineering genius had developed the most powerful, the toughest 2.5-liter engine the world had ever known. It outmuscled the little Cooper by more than 50 horsepower per car. It could be kept on the boil all day without strain. It was as close to a perfect engine as man had ever built, and Monza was the place for it. At Monza at peak revs, no other engine should have been able to stay with it.

  But the Cooper won, partly because it was light and did not need to change tires, partly because it was so superior aerodynamically. Its engine nestled behind the driver and so it was lower, slimmer, neater, and could give up 50 horsepower and win anyway.

  Strength is not enough any more. Science has become all-embracing. The small rear-engine car is only a signal of what is to come. Designers will continue to scratch out an extra horsepower here, another there. The cars will get smaller and smaller, less and less impressive as the ultimate is neared. Man—the driver—will dwarf the machine he has created. He may be no better able to control it than in the past, but it will look as if he can, and much of the drama will have gone out of motor racing.

  Chapter 13.

  The Quiet Americans

  AT THE BEGINNING of the year 1904, Europe shuddered still over the carnage wrought by Paris-Madrid, and it was doubted that the world would ever see another motor race. But across the sea Mr. William K. Vanderbilt, one of the richest men in the world, snorted derisively at such girlish sensibility. He would put on a race himself, he announced aggressively, that would "put those European races in the shade."

  Where would he run his race?

  "On Long Island," he said. "Why not? I'll make a circuit out of roads just outside the New York City limit. If they try to stop me, I'll buy the roads."

  (Three years later "they" did try to stop him, charging that crowd control at his race had become impossible; public roads were off limits. Whereupon Vanderbilt built his own road, a circuit more than 23 miles around, the cost mounting into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.)

  But in 1904, no one knew what a Grand Prix car race was like and no one dared disagree with W K. Vanderbilt. Accordingly, Vanderbilt ordered rules drawn up and a circuit found. The rules were remarkably like present Grand Prix rules: the circuit would be roads, not a track; the distance would be between 250 and 300 miles; and entries would be drawn from all the motoring nations of the world, based on elimination races that were to start at once.

  In Nassau County, just beyond the city limits, Vanderbilt's men roped off a circuit of public highway about 30 miles around, most of it winding through meadows and forests.

  Then Vanderbilt sent orders to his jewelers. He wanted a cup cast in solid silver that would show the world where the money was--the Vanderbilt money, anyway—and that would by its grandeur shift the focus of road racing from Europe to Long Island.

  The Vanderbilt Cup, when finished, stunned the world. Men had never before raced for such a prize. It was nearly a yard high, weighed more than 40 pounds, and had a capacity of 10 1/2 gallons.

  It was to some beautiful, to others merely garish. But it was indubitably expensive and it had the effect Vanderbilt intended. His race, even before it was run, commanded international attention.

  It was
scheduled for October 8, 1904, the cars to roar away down the dusty Long Island road promptly at eight a.m.

  There were no subways then, few cars, and the race was a long way by horse and buggy from the city proper. But Vanderbilt's money and organization had sold the race well, made it sound like the greatest circus ever produced by the New World. Fabulous speed, death-defying stunts were promised, and the imagination of all New York was fired.

  The crowd began trooping out to the circuit the morning before, pitching tents and establishing camps, crowding as close as possible to the most dangerous turns. All day long they came, and when night fell and the factories and shops let out, people arrived in even greater numbers. Fires were built in the woods, and meals cooked. Men sat around camp-fires smoking, discussing the morrow's race in awed tones—it was said that some of the cars could make a mile a minute—d'you suppose that could be true?

  When the dawn broke, an estimated 300,000 persons moved down to the edge of the road and waited for the race to begin. If this figure is accurate, it represents more spectators than have gathered for any American event, more than have seen all the Sebring races put together.

  There were 19 cars entered: five German Mercedes; three Panhards, one De Dietrich, a monstrous 12-liter Renault, and a Clement-Bayard from France; two Italian Fiats; and six outclassed American cars, one of them a Packard. Among the great European drivers present was Gabriel himself, the man who had won Paris-Madrid, who had skirted all the wrecks and bodies and reached Bordeaux at the fantastic average of 65.3 miles per hour.

  And so the first Vanderbilt Cup race roared away, the vast crowds swarming down onto the road behind the cars, the better to see them heeling and sliding into the first harrowing bend. There were not enough police to cope with such crowds, but somehow the road got cleared before the cars returned more than half an hour later to start their second lap. People gasped at such speed, at the great high contraptions bounding along through the blinding dust, the driver riveted to the wheel, the mechanic's legs dangling over the side as he worked his pumps and levers.

  One of the Mercedes was being raced by George Arents, and now as Arents raced down the Jamaica-Hempstead road, a tire flew off its rim, and the car hurtled out of control into the woods. Thousands of people stood all about, but somehow the car missed them all. Arents was thrown out, landed on his head, and was in a coma for two days. He recovered. But his riding mechanic, a man named Mensel, was killed instantly.

  This was the only fatality of the first Vanderbilt Cup race, but how others were avoided is a mystery. The race was, at least by the standards of 1904, "fantastically" exciting, the lead changing hands constantly during more than five hours, the crowd swarming on and off the road at will. Finally, a Panhard driven by George Heath, an American residing in Paris, roared across the finish line inches ahead of the Clement-Bayard driven by Clement himself.

  Nobody else ever finished the race. Thousands of fans poured out of the woods and rushed to surround the two cars. In a moment thousands of others, imagining that the race was now finished, strolled out onto the road to start for home.

  Vanderbilt first ordered his men to clear the road so the other cars could come in, but this was impossible to do. There were simply too many people milling about, none of them having the slightest notion that the race was not yet over, that nearly a dozen more cars were still out on the circuit, speeding toward the finish line.

  Vanderbilt, terribly worried now that a car might plow into the crowd, ordered his marshals to flag down all the cars.

  The first Vanderbilt Cup race was over, only two cars reaching the finish line, Heath winning at an average speed of 52.2 miles an hour. Another Panhard had set the lap record—70.8.

  All of which is simply to illustrate that the 1959 Grand Prix of the United States that was raced at Sebring, Florida, was not the first American appearance of Grand Prix cars; that in fact Grand Prix cars raced in America long before they ever raced in, say, Italy.

  The Vanderbilt Cup races lasted until 1916, and were raced not only on Long Island, but at Savannah, Milwaukee, Santa Monica, and San Francisco. There also was an American Grand Prix featuring European-type cars on European-type circuits nearly every year between 1908 and 1916.

  What thus becomes difficult to understand is how American motor racing ever got sidetracked onto the oval tracks (like Indianapolis), the cars becoming year by year more specialized until today they simply could not be driven down the street and around the corner. Why, after such a brilliant start, with so much money as well as so much enthusiasm behind it, did American road racing wither and die, to be rediscovered in the United States only about 1950?

  Partly the reason was the First World War, which cut off the supply of European cars and drivers for about seven years, and partly it was the emergence (beginning in 1911) of the Indianapolis race as a hazardous, often gory, "classic." Perhaps the America of those years simply was not ready for the subtleties, the versatility of European racing. Perhaps American fans wanted something they could understand—higher speeds on a track they could see all of, more palpable danger, brute courage rather than delicate skill.

  In any case, oval track racing ("driving in circles—dangerously," Stirling Moss called it) came on, road racing receded.

  It appears that three men brought road racing back to America: Sam Collier, Briggs Cunningham, and Alex Ulmann. Collier had raced sports cars at Le Mans before the war; he also owned part of Collier County, Florida. Cunningham was a millionaire sportsman who later was to race his own Cunningham Sports Cars at Sebring, Le Mans, and elsewhere. Ulmann, born in Europe, spoke French and other languages, was a motor-racing enthusiast, and was willing to do the politicking needed to get an American race accepted abroad. This group fastened on Sebring, Florida, as the site of their race. There is no legitimate reason why they should have, and it has long been whispered that the selection of Sebring was determined by the fact that Ulmann, an aircraft industry consultant, has warehouses there.

  Five miles southeast of Sebring (which is located in the geographic center of the Florida peninsula), there was an abandoned airfield where pilots had trained during the war. What is now the Automobile Racing Club of Florida laid out a 5.2-mile circuit, nearly every turn in it being either a right angle or worse. Part of the circuit was runway, concrete, and very wide; part was connecting roadway, asphalt, and narrow.

  On New Year's Eve, 1950, the first Sebring race was held, running from six p.m. to midnight, and won by a Crosley.

  Collier was dead by this time, killed racing at Watkins Glen, and Ulmann, energetic and smooth, was running things. The airfield still belonged to the government, and could be used only by a nonprofit organization, so Ulmann arranged for the Sebring Fire Department to be the official promoter of the races that followed. It still is.

  In 1952, the duration of the race was upped to twelve hours. Two foreign cars turned up, but no name drivers, and the race was a colossal flop financially. Only from 1954, when Ulmann succeeded in having the race named a world-championship event for sports cars, did Sebring really catch on. From that race on, the great factories and drivers poured across the sea to race each March at Sebring, Florida, population 7,000.

  There is much that is mysterious about the Sebring promotion. In every possible way the site is ridiculous, the circuit unexciting (the Twelve Hours qualifies as one of the dullest events of the year), and the "success" of the race inexplicable.

  Sebring is 90 miles from the nearest airport, which is at Tampa, the nearest city of any size. And even supposing that the race exerts tremendous pull, there is no way for spectators to get there except by car.

  Once they do get there, there are only five very small hotels, which hike their rates to nearly $40 a day. Just a bed costs $10 a day or more in private homes. So race week at Sebring becomes a colossal gouge, any way you look at it.

  The circuit is flat, completely uninteresting. Bulldozers long ago eradicated any distinguishing features from the terr
ain in order to make the airfield. Some of the roads (runways) are 10 or 15 cars wide. A dramatic race, on such a circuit, is virtually impossible. The sight of cars pursuing each other round turns bounded by markers and oil drums is not spectacular. Often, at Sebring, cars have spun out, come to a stop, and been driven between markers and across the fields to rejoin the race at another point farther on.

  The circuit is lapped at about 100 miles an hour in Grand Prix cars, and at about 85 miles an hour (including pit stops) during the Twelve Hours.

  The Sebring success story appears to have been built strictly on America's postwar sports car boom. Suddenly, there were half a million sports cars on American roads, and 20,000 embryonic racers. Any circuit would have succeeded during the period—a dozen others from Lime Rock, Connecticut, to Pomona, California, also have—and Sebring's preeminence seems due exclusively to the persuasiveness of Ulmann. He went to Europe, spoke to the F.I.A. (Federation Internationale de l‘Automobile) in its own tongue, and prevailed on that group to award Sebring world-championship status. Ulmann's 1959 Grand Prix was the first in America since the short-lived revival of the Vanderbilt Cup races in 1936-1937, yet there is an F.I.A. rule that no Grand Prix shall receive world-championship status until it has been run once. When he had his race, he risked having the major factories turn up their noses—but luckily three drivers came into December fighting for the title, and so they all had to come to Sebring, despite starting money lower than at any other world-championship Grand Prix-Maurice Trintignant got only $600 to start, the minimum fee elsewhere being $1,000.

  Similarly, Ulmann persuaded Enzo Ferrari to race at the 1959 Twelve Hours, despite a conflict of gasoline contracts: Ferrari had agreed to use only Shell Gas, while Ulmann had a contract with Amoco stipulating that every car in the race would use Amoco. According to Ferrari, Ulmann begged him to race at Sebring in 1959, "and by 1960 we'll have everything straightened out and you can use your own gasoline."